


That Noise

by vulcanlovesongs



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Horror, M/M, but in like an 1800s sense, but shittier and with dnp, instance of madness, think telltale heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 05:26:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10735044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcanlovesongs/pseuds/vulcanlovesongs
Summary: There’s a sound that only Dan notices, until he points it out.





	That Noise

The couch was idle, and Phil lingered there, listening to the distant traffic sounds that came naturally to London. The sound of a dog barking, the loud chatter of pedestrians, and the occasional sound of a motorcycle. 

Dan came into the lounge, looking half asleep and confused. “Can you hear that?” He asked, but gave no clue as to which sound he meant in the low volume din.

“Hear what?” Phil looked to the window that looked out on the road. None of the nightish cacophony was particularly strange, especially not for a Friday night.

“It’s like…this pulsating sound. I think it comes from under the pavement. Don’t you hear that?” he questioned, taking a few lost steps around the room and scratching his head. Phil sat silently for a moment, and found that if he paid attention, he could hear what he thought Dan meant. Below the temporal sounds of passerby, and below even the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen, there was a strange vibrational thrumming.

“I didn’t hear it before, but now that you mention it…” Phil trailed off. It didn’t go away and he couldn’t stop paying attention. Dan approached the window and stared down at the pavement.

“I think its the heating. They put all the machinery for the lighting and such under the pavement, and when everyone has their heat on, it sounds that way.” He left the window sill and came to the couch, pressing the side of his head against Phil’s sternum. “Its like something alive. Something enormous that we all walk on everyday, watching us. In a frightening way.”

“Is there a way for something to watch you and not be frightening?” He teased, trying to distract his flat mate. Dan only grunted noncommittally.

“Like your heart beat,” he mumbled, cheek still pressed to Phil’s chest. He seemed to be pressing in with more and more pressure, as though trying to enter into Phil by sheer force. A cold feeling suddenly clenched through his chest, as the pressing grew almost painful. “Yeah,” Dan continued. “All irregular like that.”

“Dan, how…how did you notice that sound?” He asked, holding back the nervousness in his voice as best he could.

“I was in the bathroom, and I opened the window. It came through, and when I heard it I kind of remembered all the other times I hadn’t noticed it, you know?”

“Why did you open the window?” Even to Phil, he sounded suspicious, and he wished he didn’t. What did he have to suspect? Dan was as prone to strange fits of dalliance as Phil himself, his mood was no reason to worry. Even if that painful pressure had not yet let up.

“I don’t know. It feels like that sound is inside me.” Phil chose to ignore this, for the time being and with considerable effort, pushed Dan away from him by the shoulders to look him in the face.

“Dan, its the middle of winter. That’s why the heating’s on, that’s why its making noise at all. Why would you open the bathroom window?” Dan squirmed in the hold Phil had on him, looking down, to the side, and anywhere else that allowed him to avoid meeting Phil’s eyes. “Dan, look at me!” He said urgently, trying not to shake him.

Dan did obey, then, and looked into Phil’s eyes as his own welled up with tears. “I don’t know! I don’t know why I opened the window!” He wailed, and the honesty in his voice turned Phil’s insides to dust. He shook Phil’s hands off, then, and lurched forward into an embrace. This time, he did not press, only weeping into Phil’s breast as Phil himself floundered in what had happened.

All was as it was, yet not at all. That sound echoed in his ears. Phil wondered if all the chatter of the city had truly fallen silent, or if that pulsating was drowning it out.

—————————- 

The next morning, Phil woke late. He had been up until the wee hours of the morning sitting half asleep and listening to Dan sob. The dark sound never dissipated, but Phil thought it was something he preferred to the shaking sounds that wrenched out of Dan every few minutes.

Irregular.

He extricated himself from Dan’s sleeping form, and went into the bathroom. He brushed his teeth and went about his business until something caught his eye. The window at the far side of the room lurked in his periphery, and he approached it with slow steps.

He has never in all his time at the flat tried to open the bathroom window, and couldn’t recall ever paying any particular attention to it. Now, though, he ran his hands carefully across the window sill, and looked for the mechanism that opened it.

There was none.

As far as he could tell, the bathroom window did not open. His breath came in short bursts as he walked back into the bedroom to get his phone and call the landlord. He left the room without taking a glance at the bed where Dan lay, looking at him oddly.

In the lounge once again, Phil listened to the ringing on the other side of the line.

“Can I help you?” The landlord said, sounding hurried but not unkind.

“Yes, its Phil,” He began, even though the man probably already knew. “I was wondering, how do you open the bathroom window?”

“Hmm,” the man responded thoughtfully. “I don’t think that window opens. Not in your flat, at least. Not unless you throw a rock through it,” he mused and gave a breathy chuckle. Phil laughed nervously in response, trying to cover the way his gasps had groan ragged. “Phil, is everything okay? No one did throw a rock, right?”

“No, no,” he said quickly. “Everything’s fine. There is one other thing I wanted to ask about though,”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Has the heating been making noise lately that you’ve heard?”

“Not that I’ve noticed,” The landlord must have heard the distressed noise that escaped Phil’s lips at that, because he was quick to add: “I can check on it, though, if it’d make you feel better. Its just in the basement, you can go look for yourself if it’d help.” This time, Phil covered the receiver with his hand, and sat back heavily on the floor. The sound still came, seemingly from every direction. Could no one else hear it? His face felt like stone, paralyzed in the same grimace he’d been wearing since he had inspected the window.

“I was wondering one more thing, actually. Is there anything…under the pavement out front that you know of? Anything that could be making noise?”

“Nothing connected to the building. Could be city stuff, ‘course. What sort of noises are you hearing?”

“Its hard to describe…its, its this low sound, hard to notice at first- _Jesus!_ ” The last bit he shouted in surprise when Dan came from behind him and plucked the phone out of his hand. Catching a breath, he felt relieved. “Thank God, Dan, tell him what the noise sounds like to you. Where do you think its coming from?”

Dan looked at him inscrutably, and his eyes slid between Phil and the still open call to the landlord. Slowly, he raised the phone to his own ear.

“I don’t hear anything.” He said. And looked at Phil curiously as he hung up without waiting to say goodbye.

“Why did you do that?” Phil burst out. “You’re the one who brought up the sound in the first place!” Dan smiled softly, as though indulging a small child, and Phil felt more baffled than enraged.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” Dan said, taking Phil’s clenched hands in his own.

“Dan,” Phil stressed. “The bathroom window _doesn’t open_. You told me it did!”

“Did I?” Dan asked, sounding amused. But he leaned in, and mouthed at Phil’s neck even as Phil tugged at his grasp. The wind came out of Phil, then, and he felt the high strung terror leak out of him like blood through a wound.

“I don’t understand what happened yesterday,” he said weakly, leaning away from Dan’s ministrations with a diluted sense of petulance.

“Neither do I,” Dan replied, his lips moved with the words against Phil’s collar bone.

“You were so upset last night. Don’t you remember that?”

“What was I upset about?” Again, that indulgent tone. This time, it did make Phil a little angry.

“The noise! The sound that you said comes from the pavement! You made me hear it too, and now I can’t stop!” Dan stopped moving then, sharp stillness coming between them. Phil may have imagined it, but Dan’s very skin seemed to go down a degree with chill.

“The…noise.” He said blankly. “I-I do hear it,” this time his voice shook, and he rubbed his eyes, as though trying to wipe away a film that blinded him. He pulled away entirely, and looked at Phil with wide eyes and furrowed brows. “I’m tired,” Dan announced finally. “Come to bed, now.”

Phil obeyed, if only because he had no idea what to do next.

—————————————-

When he woke up again, it was night time. Dan wasn’t next to him, and he felt a roiling combination of worry and dread at where he might find his counterpart.

“Dan? Are you here?” He called, and heard a quiet voice respond in the affirmative. He wandered into the lounge, finding the source of the voice.

Dan was on the couch, hugging his knees to his chest. It was a rather strange pose for someone of his height, but Phil was distracted by what he looked at. The window in the lounge was generally covered only with blinds, but a blanket had been duct taped to the wall above the glass, effectively blocking out any light but for the single fixture on the ceiling.

“W-why did you cover the window?” He asked tentatively. He walked over to it, reaching out a hand to lift the blanket before Dan stopped him.

“Don’t! Don’t touch it!” He cried loudly from the couch. “We have to block it!”

“Block what? I can’t read your mind, Dan! Sooner or later you have to tell me what’s wrong here!”

Dan breathed in for a long beat, and shivered, though as they had both observed, the heating was functioning just as it ought to. “Bad things will happen,” He breathed, so quiet that Phil could only just hear from across the room. “If we look through the window,” he added when Phil just looked at him in bafflement.

“That doesn’t make sense,” he said, voice shaking. “Dan, that doesn’t make sense!” He took several long strides across the room, enough to force Dan to crane his head back to look at his face.

“Fine,” Dan said tightly. “If you don’t believe me, go look, but don’t blame me when you see.”

“I don’t _blame_ you, Dan, I’m _worried_ -” He yanked the towel back and fell silent. There was nothing outside the window. No streetlights, no pavement, no cars. Just blackness. Like the void had situated itself outside their flat.

He stepped back. He thought about screaming. Shouting, at the terrifying confusion that had come to dominate their lives. But he found suddenly that he was not afraid. What was to fear? They were only alone, and who was to say that nothing lay beyond the door? Nothing, but some strange, powerful new world.

“Dan, let’s go to my bedroom, yeah?” He asked, turning away from where he had let the blanket drop to cover the nothingness outside.

“To do what?” Dan asked, not suspiciously, but cheekily, like he knew what Phil was thinking already. He unfolded from his position on the couch, and followed Phil up the stairs even as he chuckled. “I didn’t think you’d react this way,” he said mildly.

“You thought I’d be afraid? Like you?” Phil smiled, stepping forward to put his hands on his companion. “We _are_ very alike…” he began, biting at the skin below Dan’s ear. “But not that much.” He carried on for several moments, biting, but Dan began to make distressed noises soon after.

“What’s wrong?” Phil questioned.

“I can’t hear anything,” Dan said, his hands coming up to cover his ears. “I mean, I can…but barely. Its that humming. Its so loud, now!” Phil blinked, shaking his head just a bit.

“I suppose it is.” He pushed Dan back onto the bed. “Still, I’m sure we can drown it out.”

“Don’t be so crude,” Dan murmured, like an afterthought.

“You’re sexy when you act like a prude,” Phil said lasciviously. He forgot the sound soon enough, distracted by the energy that seemed to fill him from the darkness outside. He wasn’t sure Dan ever did though, when he thought about it afterwards. His partner had been terribly still. Too still for it to be normal.

—————————— 

In the early hours of the morning, Dan was still lying asleep. Phil extricated himself from the bed, and padded back to the lounge. He tore the blanket from its tape on the wall, and let the view be opened. 

He stood there for a long time, watching that the nothingness seemed to seep inside and touch him, in the places where only a few hours ago Dan had been touching. 

He went back to bed.

——————————- 

Much later, he did awake again, this time to Dan screaming.

“You opened it! Why? _How could you?_ ” He was tearing the blankets off of the bed, throwing anything at hand as he shrieked.

“What are you doing?” Phil shouted right back. He leapt to his feet, reaching to stop Dan from hitting him with his wildly grasping fists. “What on earth are you doing?”

“I can’t hear you! Its louder now and its your fault! I hate you, _I’ll kill you!_ ” Dan ran forward, insofar as the short distance between them allowed for running, and pushed Phil with all of strength. Which turned out to be plenty to throw Phil to the floor with a force that made his vision black for a moment. This act of violence seemed to take everything out of him, and he crumpled to his knees and sobbed, holding his ears.

Phil saw this, and then his vision went all fuzzy again. He found that he knew what was happening, felt something large and dark whisper to him that he would not see again.

“No, no,” he crawled to Dan’s side. “You love me. And we’re even, now, you know.” To punctuate the words Dan could not hear, he pressed hands to Dan’s face, a gentleness meant to communicate his blackened vision. “I love you, you know,” he said to the darkness where he knew Dan was kneeling. He could feel the wetness on Dan’s face, feel him shaking. More than that, he could hear the noises he made, broken sobbing punctuated with a sort of wailing that made Phil know that Dan was still afraid of the thing in the house. It had been outside, but now it was inside driving him mad.

He heard that same large, dark thing. The thing Dan was so afraid of, and the thing that Phil had taken into his own eyes. It was in his eyes, now, watching Dan. It was murmuring, whispering things about _blackness_ and _never_ and _trapped_. He realized then, that because Dan could not hear him, and he certainly was not looking at the moment, he was quite free to laugh. So badly, at the figure shaking in his arms, and the sounds of crying in his ears, and the rest of the silence where the humming had gone inside Dan instead of him.

He laughed. It was funny. So he laughed.


End file.
